It’s a generally-followed Rule o’ Journalese that buses plunge. They occasionally slip, slide, tumble, skid or even careen, but usually they just plunge, like this one:
A bus carrying Mexican tourists plunged off a 650-foot cliff today, killing at least 60 people in a crash police said could have been caused by brake failure on the steep mountainous roads.
Here’s Wikipedia’s take:
A bus plunge is a phenomenon in news media, often used whenever a passenger bus is involved in a mishap, typically involving injuries or fatalities. In these cases the bus is almost invariably described as having plunged into an object during a collision or off the road.
In order to verify this, I did a quick search on Google News. Here are the number of hits for various potential headlines involving bus accidents:
- Bus plummets: 2
- Bus wrecks: 1
- Bus falls: 23
- Bus careens: 1
- Bus tumbles: 2
- Bus crashes: 87
- BUS PLUNGES: 173
Buses plunge just as sure as wildfires char acres, juries weigh, blasts rock and boards mull.
UPDATE: There’s a whole website devoted to the Bus Plunge. Enjoy.
8 Responses to “UPDATE: Bus plunges for 50,000th time”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
April 17th, 2006 at 7:01 pm
sounds like someone has a little too much time on his hands….
April 17th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
I’ll take a pint of boards mull and a pound of char acres, and a side of smart a$$
April 17th, 2006 at 7:46 pm
Get a life pal!
April 17th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
How’s this for no life? Bus Plunges is up to 186 hits on Google News now…
April 17th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
Now it’s 191…
April 17th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
198 now. At LST, we drive the news…right over the cliff.
April 18th, 2006 at 7:52 am
Did ya hear that an infant actually survived the “Plunge”. That is an amazing thing. 650 feet and survived. That is one lucky child…..welll maybe not, he is now in the hands of Mexican medical personnel. They will probably screw him up worse than the “Plunge”.
April 18th, 2006 at 10:44 am
How about “hurricanes SLAM”?